© 2026 New Hampshire Public Radio

Persons with disabilities who need assistance accessing NHPR's FCC public files, please contact us at publicfile@nhpr.org.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
August is National Make a Will Month, a reminder to create or review important plans for the future. Check out a resource many of our supporters find helpful: LegacyPlanner is a secure online service that makes it easy to create or update your will -- for free.

How Politics Killed Universal Child Care In The 1970s

Women demonstrate for accessible child care at the First Women's March down Fifth Avenue on Aug. 26, 1970.
Freda Leinwand, Courtesy of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Women demonstrate for accessible child care at the First Women's March down Fifth Avenue on Aug. 26, 1970.

American parents often have difficulty securing care for their children while they go to work. Child care in the U.S. is tremendously expensive, and in many parts of the country, extremely scarce.

Rewind almost 50 years, and the same problems existed.

But in 1971, the United States came very close to having universal, federally subsidized child care. NPR examines how Congress came to pass the legislation, and why President Nixon vetoed it.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

NPR National Correspondent Jennifer Ludden covers economic inequality, exploring systemic disparities in housing, food insecurity and wealth.
Related Content

You make NHPR possible.

NHPR is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.

Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.